Use Magento If You're Serious About E-Commerce

If you are serious about the success of your business, Magento is the best platform to use. If you have decided to use Magento, are you aware of how to best use it? Magento is a powerful program. Some online business people liken it to a universal remote that can control every media outlet in the house. Magento can do almost anything, but it depends on how much you are willing to work. Are you ready to spend time teaching your clients how Magento’s admin panel works? If you are not ready for this, you may want to focus on an alternative. Magento is a professional system, so experts find it as easy to work with - similar to using Illustrator and Photoshop by Adobe. The learning curve for non-professionals is steep - but while it is demanding in the beginning, stay resolute and you will find your way.

Magneto may mean you will pay more to host your business. You will also spend more time trying to comprehend the administrative features - but once you get over these initial hurdles, your platform can expand infinitely.

Magento leads in e-commerce by commanding close to a third of the market share.

Magento is an excellent platform, and could be the last option that falls just short of a customized web app when a user:

Has an expansive and enormous inventory

Needs to put together some complicated products

Has seemingly static content

Wants to operate several stores from one back-end that draws support from a single CMS

Needs a strong admin panel that is expandable

Other benefits of a Magento system include:

SEO-friendly

Compliant with numerous payment gateways

Developers have made Magento extensions for many things, including exports, imports, and auctions.

Magento has a big user base and substantial commercial backing, which makes it secure and active. Updates to the system happen frequently and on time.

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform. It has a PHP framework which works on the popular Zend framework, and augments its storage by using a MySQL database. Its module template system makes it possible to override theme and core files without distracting the daily updates, or editing them.

The module system is hierarchical in nature, and its open-source nature is both positive and negative. The Magento system ecosystem must have a large, complex codebase for it to exist. The codebase may be poorly developed at times, and there may be confusion in the naming of functions. Sometimes it feels like the entire system needs modification, in an array of files, to achieve the simple feature change you want. This tends to mean that professional Magento developers charge more for their services. The developers have sacrificed their time, studied and received certification in coding, and worked very hard to master and understand this complex platform. Therefore, they deserve and anticipate high compensation for their expertise and time.

It is not easy to perform caching in Magento

Since developers have configured the platform on a hosting solution, Magento is highly scalable and can operate at high speed. If a developer produces a Magento platform that is not configured properly, it will be very slow. The answer to such challenges is full-page caching, database back-end caching, and PHP opcode caching.

Opcode caching works well with PHP, but it is critical to update all system files for proper configuration. It is mandatory to have a Redis back-end cache. Also, if you need optimal performance, it is good to have a full-time cache, similar to Varnish.

The requirements above mean you require a hosting solution that supports all features. Moreover, you need to have a team that knows the entire configuration. Magento does not operate optimally on discount hosting providers such as GoDaddy and Bluehost. You are required, therefore, to come up with a Digital Ocean, for instance, or Amazon EC2.

What do caches do? In general, a cache is a temporary storage buffer for any data that developers get from a computer or a disc. If you need to retrieve data from a cache, it will be faster since a cache’s memory is volatile and has a higher order magnitude than reading from a disc, or recomputing. Different caches work differently in various levels of conceptualization in the framework. The opcode cache functions at PHP code compiling level, and saves a lot of data chunks of PHP for future execution. A back-end cache in Magento helps improve the file caching system. A page in Magento takes longer to load, since the system has to process hundreds of XML and PHP files. The contents of the page don’t interchange the requests, and when Magento needs a page it uses the file system to save the results. This is better than re-rendering the critical page. On the other hand, disc reads respond slowly, and it is better to use Redis to store any pages or blocks.

The third type of cache does not work with Magento. It is a caching proxy for HTTP. It separates the world from your website, and this makes it possible to save numerous pages with their URLs. Though caching is a great idea, it makes Magento complicated. If you require more practice on Magento related projects, browse the talent available on Freelancer.

Compare Magento to its alternatives

It is useful to compare Magento with WordPress, its main alternative. This is possible if you have installed the WooCommerce plugin. If you have a business with few products, and one that can fit in a standardized business model, you might well want to consider WordPress/WooCommerce. For one - Magento developers are more expensive compared to WordPress developers. Two - since WordPress has a smart database, the community is thriving. Three - the platform is fast, small, and works with any server, along with various discount service providers.

If this development works for you, it saves you the cost of hosting and development. If you would like to develop your site without hiring third-party services, you will want to choose the WordPress/WooCommerce combination.

Despite that - and despite WordPress/WooCommerce being superb due to its advantages in blogging - Magento allows its customers to receive discounts and configure products in order to effectively manage inventories. WordPress/WooCommerce starts to get clunky when your site gains products, and when you start to develop complicated products with attributes. WordPress will slow down when you need to schedule discounts, or give rebates to retain customers.

What’s good for you?

Every form of technology comes with differing advantages, but there often are setbacks to be considered. The outstanding Magento benefits include:

Customizable and flexible

Open-source

Awesome discount system

Greatly supports e-Commerce

It is easy to integrate payment gateway

Multi-tenant support

Supports SEO

Has a large user base

It is highly scalable

Its open-source nature leaves it with a large codebase, which leads to ease in customization

Some disadvantages include:

Other platforms are more well-documented than Magento

It requires expensive servers

It is expensive to develop since it’s harder and less popular than some other well-known platforms

You can only find relevant features in commercial modules

Feeling more confident about what Magento is and how it can help your business? If you have a large number of products, and you need to create a more complex site with customizable options, Magento is a great option. It lets you manage your sales, keep track of sales volume, and roll out any discounts. Invest in a good site and it will appear professional, SEO-friendly, and highly scalable. Magento will save you unnecessary losses in business, and if you invest some time and money, your online business is bound to succeed.

Have you heard of or used Magento? Share your thoughts about it in the comment section below.